64 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



IMPKOVING PASTURE AND WASTE LAND. 



ESSEX. 



From the Report of the Committee. 



On the 28th of July, your Committee visited the farm of 

 Joseph Hortou, Ipswich, to examine a piece of land entered 

 for premium. 



The Committee would suggest that one item of expense, 

 the carting off of the sods, etc., might have been saved by 

 burning on the land. One of the Committee remarked that 

 he thought the burning might have been omitted, and that the 

 simple turning over of the sods and bushes would have been 

 sufficient to reclaim the land. 



This brings in discussion the comparative merits of burning 

 and non-burning ; that is, merely ploughing. Where there 

 is a superabundance of vegetable matter, as on peat land and 

 on some clay soil, burning has proved of much advantage. 

 Mr. Horton's land seemed to be somewhat of a clayey nature, 

 though not decidedly clay land, yet a certain admixture of the 

 latter with gravel and loam. We should also judge that it 

 was lacking in humus or vegetable matter. 



We think a combination of the two methods mentioned 

 would have been the best ; that is, to have burnt the toughest 

 sods and bushes, which would have taken a long time in rot- 

 ting, and to have left all grass or pliant sods on the land. 

 The process which Mr. Horton pursued is called " paring 

 and burning," and is more common in England than in this 

 country. Mr. Colman, in his "European Agriculture," 

 devotes some attention to this subject. He says : " The 

 process of paring and burning the surface of land has been 

 practised with great, though not always with equal success, in 

 many parts of the country. The objects of it are threefold : 

 first, to reduce the coarse vegetable matter on the surface to 



